Mulino’s coming cabinet (part 1)

May 16, 2024

President Cortizo and President-elect Mulino in a courtesy visit at the Palacio de las Garzas after the election. The “official” transition period begins on June 3 and the inauguration / changing of the guard for all elected offices happens on July 1. Photo by the Presidencia.

National unity, or just the same old families? Or do we see something actually new?

by Eric JacksonJuly

President-elect José Raúl Mulino held his first collective cabinet photo-op for selected rabiblanco media on the morning of May 16, but his first half-dozen ministers were revealed the day before, and his transition chief some days before that.

Just who is going to lead the fragmented new National Assembly is up in the air. The legislature’s leaders will be elected on July 1, and one way to look at Mulino’s cabinet choices could be as how they might attract or alienate a legislative majority with which he’ll likely have to work.

So far it appears that the cabinet will above all come from the wealthy oligarchic fringes of Panama’s small white minority, with some exceptions coming from law enforcement subordinates from Mulino’s days as Ricardo Martinelli’s security minister. Some of the extended clan of the fugitive Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Berrocal and his wife Marta Linares de Martinelli are included, or seem to be. Mulino made his courtesy call on Cortizo accompanied by journalist Rafael Berrocal as well as his transition chief, but we don’t know if either of those two will go on to occupy formal posts once the new government is in place.

Here are the first of his picks:

Minister of Economy and Finance: Felipe Chapman Arias

This 55-year-old lawyer, economist and consultant is the son of a father who occupied a comparable position in the 1994-1999 PRD administration of Ernesto “Toro” Pérez Balladares. Like his father Guillermo Chapman Fábrega he’s known to be an advocate for neoliberal economic theories and consequent government policies. He was early to sound an alarm after the Supreme Court for the second time struck down the mining concession originally granted to imprisoned fraud artist Richard Fifer but ultimately subdivided with a part eventually passing into the hands of Canadian-based multinational mining company First Quantum. The research and consulting company of which he’s a partner, Investigaciónes y Desarrollo SA (INDESA), mostly works for banks and corporations as clients. He’s a partner in the Rosas y Rosas law firm and on the board of directors of Banco del Istmo. In the past he supported the mining colony contract with First Quantum and the privatization of the IDAAN water and sewer utility.

Minister of Foreign Relations: Javier Martínez Acha

60-year-old Martínez is a member of the PRD and of the family that owns the Casa del Mariscos restaurant, where he tends to hang out and hobnob with a variety of political figures. He’s a lawyer, economist and civil engineer mostly educated at Texas A&M, a popular school for rich Panamanians to send their kids. (Family ties are a big thing in Panamanian politics, but Aggie ties are also a factor here.) He has been working as general manager of Geneva Asset Management, SA. Over the years Martínez Acha served on the PRD’s National Executive Committee and in a now-deleted introduction to his Twitter feed he described himself as a social democrat.

As vice ministers Mulino has chosen Florida State University – Panama international relations and political science professor Carlos Guevara Mann, leader of Panama’s pan-Latin American Bolivarian Society and frequent La Prensa columnist; and Carlos Ruiz-Hernández, former Panamanian ambassador at the United Nations in Martinelli times who has since then worked for the Washington-based arbitration firm Allen & Overy LLP.

Minister of the Environment: Juan Carlos Navarro Quelqueju

Navarro, the former PRD mayor of Panama City and that party’s 2014 presidential standard-bearer, is the scion of the Tropigas fortune and was founder of the National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON). In recent years he has been building a solar panels business. Navarro has vociferously embraced a couple of causes in the past year or so: he was strongly opposed to the mining deal with First Quantum and advocates the closure of the border with Colombia for environmental reasons. The consolidation of Benicio Robinson’s power over and within the PRD pretty much coincided with Navarro’s eclipse in that party’s power circles. NOT an Aggie — he’s a Dartmouth and Harvard grad.

Minister of Public Safety: Frank Ábrego Mendoza

61-year-old Ábrego, educated at the General Francisco Morazán Military Academy in Honduras, the old US Army School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) and the US Army Special Forces Officers’ School, was one of Noriega’s boys, personal friend of the strongman and active-duty Panama Defense Forces at invasion time. A Santeño by birth, he was one of the PDF guys who survived the post-invasion purges and became part of the renewed police force. As a cop he did riot control, anti-terrorist and border patrol duties, then was the founding director of the National Border Service (SENAFRONT) when it split off from the National Police in 2008, until he took his retirement from law enforcement in 2016. However, after his police career Ábrego served as a security consultant to presidents Varela and Cortizo. It is said that one of Ábrego’s heroes is the late General Omar Torrijos. In Martinelli times, with Ábrego as its director, SENAFRONT was brought into the cities as an elite riot squad and was widely criticized for its brutality in Colon.

Minister of Labor: Jackeline Muñoz de Cedeño

She’s the daughter of José Muñoz Molina, founder of the small Alianza Party that was in Mulino’s coalition with the Martinelistas. Currently she’s a deputy in the Central Americana Parliament (PARLACEN) and also alternate representante of the Panama City corregimiento of Tocumen. A Panama-educated lawyer, she practices family and immigration law. She was the running mate of the self-proclaimed “sexual buffalo,” RM mayoral candidate Sergio Gálvez, in an ill-fated run for the Panama City mayor’s office.

Minister of Health: Dr. Fernando Boyd Galindo

Dr. Boyd Galindo is a dentist specializing in periodontics, educated at the University of Panama and the University of Pennsylvania. He taught that specialty at the University of Panama in the 1980s and 90s. he served a chair of the Social Security Fund (CSS) board of directors from 1990 through 1996. He was president of the Panamanian Dental Association in 1987 and 1988.

Chief of the transition team: Aníbal Galindo Navarro

Galindo is an attorney, of the family that created the medicine importers’ cartel. Among his clients was the mining company First Quantum, but it seems that his practice has mostly been offshore asset protection. He was vice president of Cambio Democratico when Martinelli still controlled it and was an advisor to Martinelli and an ambassador in Qatar during that presidency.

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Hightower, God bless the nurses

May 15, 2024

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Nurses are fighting back against corporations — including religiously affiliated hospital chains — that profit from their low pay and severe understaffing. National Nurses United photo, taken on Mothers Day.

GOD BLESS NURSES — AND PLEASE HURRY!

by Jim Hightower — OtherWords

Every religion prioritizes care for the needy. Christianity’s Benedictine Rule, for example, puts care of the sick atop the moral order — “above and before every other duty.”

Really? Even above the holy Wall Street mandate that medical and insurance conglomerates must squeeze every last penny of profits out of America’s corporate-care system? Well, there’s morality — and then there’s business.

Consider how today’s monopolized and financialized hospital networks treat nurses — the high-touch frontline people who do the most to put “care” in “health care.”

Often paid a pittance, thousands of nurses across America are now organizing and unionizing against the inequities of this system. The nurses’ core grievance, however, is not their pay, but the gross understaffing imposed on them and their patients by profiteering hospital chains.

In a national survey, more than half of nurses feel “used up” and “emotionally drained.” Why? Primarily because executives keep goosing up profits by eliminating care providers, making it impossible for the remaining, stretched-out staff to meet their own high moral standard of care.

That’s demoralizing for nurses — and deadly for patients.

Yet corporate care lobbyists loudly squawk that hospital chains can’t afford to pay fair wages and fully staff up. Ironically, one of the loudest squawkers is the hospital mega-chain Ascension, a Catholic Church offshoot proclaiming to be “rooted in the loving ministry of Jesus as healer.”

Some healer. In a devilish partnership with a Wall Street huckster, Ascension has been slashing nursing staffs while paying its CEO $13 million a year, hoarding $18 billion in cash, and allotting a pitiful 2 percent of its budget for charitable care of the poor.

To help battle health care greed, go to NationalNursesUnited.org.

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Editorials: The coming government’s challenges; and When HE grows up…

May 15, 2024

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At least we’re now getting some rain! But the empty billboard above the pedestrian overpass is a common reminder that the politicians who will take office on July 1 will face a troubled economy. Photo by Eric Jackson.

The big transition issues

The first issue will be Ricardo Martinelli. Will Mulino want appear as he campaigned, and as many presume, just a front man answering to and following the orders of the former president? Even when he is the president and doesn’t have to do that? Giving his old boss safe passage to Nicaragua would prompt some protests, to be sure, but it would put the problem that much farther away, in a place where press freedoms are severely curtailed and the government won’t want all that publicity.

Some noises coming from the Martinelista camp posit Martinelli on the street and back into political action, with the ex-president not interfering with Mulino’s executive duties but being put in charge of arranging a right-wing coalition in the legislature.

Constitutionally, Martinelli might get his sentence commuted, but could not get a pardon. Will there be an attempt to ratify the theft and laundering of more than $70 million in public funds that allowed him to buy control of the EPASA newspaper chain?

What would the Supreme Court say about such things? What would the US government say? What would international financial institutions say? Would citizens who could take to the streets and shut down the national economy do that? What might the police do?

The debt

The new government will be severely constrain by the huge national debt that was run up by the current government, especially by Benicio Robinson’s majority in the legislature and grasping PRD local officials. Part of the debt problem for Mulino and potential RM / PRD alliance is that the next legislature will pick a new comptroller general and there will be strong objections to yet another one who looks the other way. Do we get a next comptroller who looks back and conducts audits of how we got into our current debt crisis and who the beneficiaries of improper money moves may have been?

In any case the debt is a huge constraint on good things or bad things that the government will be able to do. It will functionally mock some of Mulino’s more expensive campaign trail promises.

Rolling foreign dice

The Biden administration quite aptly called Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal and his two sons crooks. Is Mulino betting on Donald Trump returning to the White House and reversing that attitude? Is he betting on the Panamanian people putting up with Trump as a political factor here?

Mulino talks about closer ties with the MERCOSUR trading bloc of Argentia, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, with seven other South American “associate states.” As in hitching our wagon to an organization that barely functions, largely due to the waves of weirdness coming out of Argentina? Would that balance off annoying our more traditional trading partners?

The mine

Mulino is making one of First Quantum’s lawyers head of his transition team and, having avoided debates and statements on the subject during the election campaign, now talking about a negotiated settlement with the thuggish multinational mining company. So, to close the mine, will the routine be that it must be put into operation again? See how well THAT one goes.

Water

Damming Rio Indio to get more water for canal operations is a no-brainer. Just kicking out those who live there with little or no compensation would be a typical brainless and heartless rabiblanco way to go about it. Really, a typical Ricky Martinelli way. If that’s as far as it goes, it would still leave much of Panama with chronic water problems. But would debt considerations allow us to do much about that?

The border with Colombia

Darien as a mass migration route has been terribly destructive of what had been a pristine area and is unsustainable by any of a number of ways of looking at the issue. José Raúl Mulino says that he’s going to close that border and that the Americans should help. That problem would be the details. We wouldn’t be well advised to tell indigenous families with members on each side of the border since well before there was a border that they are now permanently separated. An overpriced wall with kickbacks to generate a slush fund for politicians to steal? That would be a true Martinelli solution but would be breached in no time flat.

But would any border wall, physical of figurative, have to be maintained by the presence of US military forces? Both Panamanian and US considerations would make that an explosively dangerous thing to try to do.

The United States stopping its economic strangulation of Venezuela would be a practical way to slow the migration. The United State raising artificial islands from the sea floor to create internationally supervised migrant camps might help. US forces going to war in Colombia against the right-wing paramilitaries turned broad-spectrum criminal gangs who dominate the human traffic across the border. Given Washington’s dysfunction, there would surely be fools in Congress who would hail such intervention into the problem of warlordism on the Colombian periphery as a good idea. It’s not.

The baby who remained under the rubble all night in Gaza has made it safely. I see no one sharing. If he were dead, everyone would share! Share positivity… pic.twitter.com/vU6Or6o7wb
— Mohamad Safa (@mhdksafa) May 14, 2024

This one survives…

After a night buried under the rubble of Gaza, this infant survives. When he’s an adolescent boy, or a young man, think he’ll thank Israel and its arms suppliers for the experience?

The trite conventional wisdom is that down the road a few years this is another recruit for Hamas. That would be an optimistic prediction from an Israeli perspective. The next generation of Palestinian freedom fighters – if they are forced to have one – will make their foes wish they had Hamas back.

Portrait of Benito Juárez, National Palace, Mexico City.
Wikimedia photo by Jorge Méndez.

Never abuse power by humiliating your peers, because power ends and the memory lasts.

Benito Juárez

Bear in mind…

We’re not going to have the America that we want until we elect leaders who are going to tell the truth – not most days, but every day.

Ann Richards

The one and only method of teaching men the true religion was established by Divine Providence for the whole world, and for all times: that is, by persuading the understanding through reasons, and by gently attracting or exhorting the will.

Bartolomé de las Casas

My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.

Jane Austen

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What’s in season in and around the public market in Penonome

May 14, 2024

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There are different varieties of bananas, plantains and squashes being sold right now, along with many other things.

What’s in season?

Photos and comments by Eric Jackson

Probably the most famous public market in Cocle province is the one in El Valle, but by various measures the one in downtown Penonome equals or betters it. First of all, there is a fresh meat, poultry and fish section of the Penonome market. Then, in the same building but apart from the market itself, there is my favorite bakery and on this occasion, they had a really good variation on the cheese bread that I crave. This one was small loaves sprinkled with herbs over the cheese.

The fruit, vegetable, beans and grains vendors inside are the heart if the operation in a farmers’ marketing town that goes back to colonial times, but upstairs they have a handicrafts section, there are people selling things outside the building and there are a bunch of nearby farm and garden oriented businesses.

I go by bus, so have fewer worries about traffic and parking being a pain in downtown Penonome. Maybe the next mayor will wise up and oversee the construction of some parking structures.

I went to the market with my camera in my bag and didn’t notice any tourists around. Some people seemed surprised by this old gringo taking pictures. But take this not as a tale of a picturesque tourist trap. It’s the economy.

From this lady’s farm, two varieties of limes and ice cream beans.

The big papayas. The little bananas. AND the garlic and green peppers staples for a low-budget old hippies’ ramen noodles. Et cetera.

Inside you find middlewoman vendors who sell other people’s produce, with bigger selections.

I could get into one of the darkest and least-told chapters in Panamanian history, the starvation and deaths (mostly from beriberi) in Panama City during and just after the devastating turn-of-the-19th-and-20th-centuries Thousand Days War. The moral of the story, other than the practical antiwar message? If you are on a basic poverty rations diet, VARY that diet. Too starchy? Oh well — but do corn one time, and wheat the next, and some rice (better brown), eat some plantains, and alternate tubers like skins-on potatoes, and yuka, otoes, ñame and other tropical tubers. The rotation might save your life. When getting past the starches, look at fruits and veggies before the meat, poultry and seafood.

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Egypt joins in accusing Israel of genocide at the World Court

May 12, 2024

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“It’s a real diplomatic punch,” a former Israeli diplomat said. “Israel would have to take it very seriously.” Al-Aqsa Hospital, Deir Al-Balah, Central Gaza. Photo from the Times of Gaza.

As Gaza assault intensifies, Egypt joins
ICJ case accusing Israel of genocide

by Olivia Rosane — Common Dreams

Egypt announced on Sunday that it would join South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice causing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

The announcement from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs came nearly a week after Israel seized the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and the day after the Israel Defense Forces issued new evacuation orders for Rafah and the north of Gaza. It also comes as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said that around 300,000 people had fled Rafah in the last week and the death toll reported by the Gaza Health Ministry surpassed 35,000.

“The submission… comes in light of the worsening severity and scope of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, and the continued perpetration of systematic practices against the Palestinian people, including direct targeting of civilians and the destruction of infrastructure in the strip, and pushing Palestinians to flee,” the Egyptian ministry said in the statement explaining its decision.

Over the last week, @UNRWA estimates around 300,000 people have now fled #Rafah, as the forced and inhumane displacement of Palestinians continues.

There is nowhere safe to go.

There is nowhere safe to go.

There is nowhere safe to go. pic.twitter.com/sPnmblvg47
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) May 12, 2024

South Africa filed its case against Israel in late December 2023, accusing Israel of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention as it waged its war on Gaza.

In a preliminary ruling in January, the ICJ determined that it was plausible that Israel was conducting a genocide in Gaza and ordered it to “take all measures within its power” to avoid doing so.

In its statement, Egypt’s foreign ministry called on Israel “to comply with its obligations as the occupying power and to implement the provisional measures issued by the ICJ, which require ensuring access to humanitarian and relief aid in a manner that meets the needs of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

Israel cut off aid when it seized the Rafah border crossing, making it even harder for Gazans to get access to essential goods like food and fuel, though Israel said on Sunday it had opened a new crossing for aid in the north.

The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also repeated a call for the UN Security Council and the international community to take action to stop violations in Gaza and Israel’s attack on Rafah.

Tel Aviv is forcing Palestinians to be contestants in its murderous game show as it flouts international law and basic human decency.

Egypt is the third country after Colombia and Turkey to request to join South Africa’s case. However, its request is especially significant for Israel, Alon Liel, former director of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, told Al Jazeera. Liel said that Egypt was the “cornerstone” of Israel’s standing in the Middle East since the two countries signed a treaty in 1979.

“With Egypt joining South Africa now in The Hague, it’s a real diplomatic punch. Israel would have to take it very seriously,” Liel said. “Israel has to… listen to the world—not only to the Israeli public opinion asking now for revenge.”

Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza began October 7 in response to a Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed around 1,100 people and captured around 250 hostages. Before that attack, Israel had blockaded Gaza for 16 years.

Egypt’s action on Sunday accompanied warnings and expressions of alarm from humanitarian workers, diplomats, and journalists as Israel escalated its campaign in Gaza over the weekend.

“Over the past 48 hours, Israel has intensified its attacks in Gaza as it orders Palestinians in the south to move north and the north to move south,” journalist and Intercept co-founderJeremy Scahill wrote on social media Sunday. “Tel Aviv is forcing Palestinians to be contestants in its murderous game show as it flouts international law and basic human decency.”

UNRWA on Saturday posted photos of bomb-damaged schools in Khan Younis to which displaced families were now returning following the new evacuation orders.

“The classrooms are torched. Walls are blown out. There is rubble everywhere,” UNRWA said. “This situation is unfolding under the world’s watch. Enough is enough.”

Responding to the images, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote, “Since the war began, most people in Gaza have moved multiple times: on average once a month. They desperately sought safety that they never found. Some have no choice but to stay in bombed-out UNRWA shelters.”

“The claim of ‘safe zones’ is false and misleading,” Lazzarini continued. “No place is safe in Gaza. Period.”

Again and again.
The exodus continues.

The Israeli authorities continue to issue forced displacement orders also known as “evacuation orders”. This is forcing people in #Rafah to flee anywhere and everywhere.

Since the war began, most people in #Gaza have moved multiple… https://t.co/dnpAllLq3I
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) May 11, 2024

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement Sunday, “A full-scale offensive on Rafah cannot take place.”

“I can see no way that the latest evacuation orders, much less a full assault, in an area with an extremely dense presence of civilians, can be reconciled with the binding requirements of international humanitarian law and with the two sets of binding provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice,” Turk said.

However, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) argued on social media Sunday that Israel’s actions in Rafah already comprised “a large-scale military attack, and not a limited operation as described by Israel.”

The group said that Israel had killed at least 116 people—among them 22 women and 38 children—since IDF forces entered Rafah one week ago.

In addition to stepping up its campaign in Rafah, the IDF has increased its attacks on parts of northern Gaza, including Jabalaya, the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

Heavy Israeli bombardment of Jabalia refugee camp continues. This video shows the bombardment of the medical personnel and journalists in the camp. pic.twitter.com/HFVEA5Be9B
— Mustafa Barghouti @Mustafa_Barghouti (@MustafaBarghou1) May 12, 2024

“We have been hearing from eyewitnesses on the ground, in that very densely populated area, that military tanks are surrounding evacuation centers and residential buildings,” Al Jazeera journalist Tareq Abu Azzoum reported.

PCHR concluded: “In sum, Israel is continuing its genocidal military campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza unabated. We reiterate our call for an immediate cease-fire. This genocide must end now.”

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Storm damage – work to do but a small offset from wanted rains

May 12, 2024

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YIKES! Open the front door and see the chaya – Mayan spinach tree – fallen over just in front of my gate. An awkward detour, a bunch of chopping and a bit of replanting to do, and lots of cuttings to give away if I can. Fast growing, edible privacy hedge stuff, it is.

LOVE that rainy season, farm damage and all

a photo article by Eric Jackson

Face it. I’m this rustic old hippie, lazy to begin with and in kind of a funk of late. The Panama News and feeding the animals take priority over cleaning up after myself or maintaining the farm. But there are limits, some of them externally imposed.

Were I living in the USA, I’d have an ordinance enforcement officer or lawyers from a homeowers’ association on my case for living like this. But this is Panama, where there is something of a privacy culture, and this is a semi-rural neighborhood in Cocle. Those neighbors who would do battle with me would do so over other issues.

But I do need to sharpen machetes, and clean up this mess.

I can sing the praises of chaya in many ways. It’s more nutritious that spinach per se, but you have to cook it to neutralize toxins that will make you sick before eating it. No problem. Indigenous people were doing that for more than a thousand years before the Spaniards intruded. But one thing about it, the plant puts down shallow roots. As in a big enough soak to a big enough plant and it’s likely to topple over under its own weight. Heavy winds, which we didn’t have this this storm, would just be gravy.

To grow chaya you just take a cutting and stick it in the ground. The elements will grow it without chemical additions or careful tending. Until it falls over and leaves a gap in your edible privacy hedge. Almost perfect for the lazy hippie who’s a writer first and a subsistence farmer to support that.

Dogs don’t mind rainy season, especially when they have an understanding human around who won’t get too upset it they shake of the water on them.

And if the plumbing isn’t functioning as it really should be, rainy season lets you get away with that, too. It’s nature’s way.

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Martinelli is a guy who has been convicted of laundering more than $70 million in stolen public funds to buy himself a newspaper chain. Graphic from Mulino’s Twitter / X account.

National unity?

Ann Landers Way in Chicago. Photo by Lorie Shaull.

Bear in mind…

Kidnapped posters with photographs of the hostages and missing held in Gaza by Hamas, at the wall outside of the Kirya military base area. Wikimedia photo by Yossipik.

People gather in San Francisco to honor journalists, storytellers and witness bearers in Palestine and to call for justice, accountability and an end to impunity for all journalists who have been killed. Photo by Peg Hunter.

RAWK! Cropped and color-adjusted photo of a black vulture by RangerBob13.

Getting old can bring on silliness as well as wisdom

The Chiffons – My Boyfriend’s Backhttps://youtu.be/Sgf2XghdSF4?si=QF55e3ZgNHCldzfJ

Sha Na Na – Teen Angelhttps://youtu.be/15Rr3UQiOAk?si=WVF40ETPtFwbItX8

The Shangri-Las – Leader of The Packhttps://youtu.be/Q8UKf65NOzM?si=2HZDPFt-J68kzTsJ

The Tubes – Don’t Touch Me Therehttps://youtu.be/UKL4RhkuKG8?si=m7kP3wTTHKMBDmUs

Alice Playten – Pizza Manhttps://youtu.be/1VYQpWRMVas?si=sE-Rjf-3zAq6APGz

The Ronettes – Be My Babyhttps://youtu.be/rT1QqjFzrgY?si=Esj6zSMiKSgr1Loh

Frank Zappa – Anyway the Wind Blowshttps://youtu.be/Yao-7r7nEZg?si=3XX1GF257JeQ0HEb

Gene Chandler – Duke of Earlhttps://youtu.be/Q8UKf65NOzM?si=2HZDPFt-J68kzTsJ

Peggy March – I Will Follow Himhttps://youtu.be/IRk9gAqjLgg?si=laUEwgCN_tbUM46R

Dion – Runaround Suehttps://youtu.be/nFch8vH81ks?si=guxacPmQq-wpKTDT

Shelley Fabares – Johnny Angelhttps://youtu.be/1vyYnKuPob8?si=C7sfsacDAXvZyudD

Solomon Burke – Cry to Mehttps://youtu.be/h1U2GfCGIEs?si=5JoF5o2jELEOUqAf

Los Silvertones – Old Buzzardhttps://youtu.be/4fyyIQ30ktc?si=HxCneIo00Xm–liQ

~ ~ ~

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At a time when he had more hope and power, Colon Mayor Alex Lee got saved. At least for the moment. Photo from his Twitter / X feed.

Alex Lee defeated at the polls, arrested at Tocumen Airport

from social media with a note by Eric Jackson

President Cortizo and President-elect Mulino in a courtesy visit at the Palacio de las Garzas after the election. The “official” transition period begins on June 3 and the inauguration / changing of the guard for all elected offices happens on July 1. Photo by the Presidencia.

National unity, or just the same old families? Or do we see something actually new?

by Eric JacksonJuly

Minister of Economy and Finance: Felipe Chapman Arias

Minister of Foreign Relations: Javier Martínez Acha

Minister of the Environment: Juan Carlos Navarro Quelqueju

Minister of Public Safety: Frank Ábrego Mendoza

Minister of Labor: Jackeline Muñoz de Cedeño

Minister of Health: Dr. Fernando Boyd Galindo

Chief of the transition team: Aníbal Galindo Navarro

Nurses are fighting back against corporations — including religiously affiliated hospital chains — that profit from their low pay and severe understaffing. National Nurses United photo, taken on Mothers Day.

GOD BLESS NURSES — AND PLEASE HURRY!

by Jim Hightower — OtherWords

At least we’re now getting some rain! But the empty billboard above the pedestrian overpass is a common reminder that the politicians who will take office on July 1 will face a troubled economy. Photo by Eric Jackson.

The big transition issues

The debt

Rolling foreign dice

The mine

Water

The border with Colombia

This one survives…

Portrait of Benito Juárez, National Palace, Mexico City.Wikimedia photo by Jorge Méndez.

Bear in mind…

There are different varieties of bananas, plantains and squashes being sold right now, along with many other things.

What’s in season?

Photos and comments by Eric Jackson

From this lady’s farm, two varieties of limes and ice cream beans.

The big papayas. The little bananas. AND the garlic and green peppers staples for a low-budget old hippies’ ramen noodles. Et cetera.

Inside you find middlewoman vendors who sell other people’s produce, with bigger selections.

“It’s a real diplomatic punch,” a former Israeli diplomat said. “Israel would have to take it very seriously.” Al-Aqsa Hospital, Deir Al-Balah, Central Gaza. Photo from the Times of Gaza.

As Gaza assault intensifies, Egypt joins ICJ case accusing Israel of genocide

by Olivia Rosane — Common Dreams

Tel Aviv is forcing Palestinians to be contestants in its murderous game show as it flouts international law and basic human decency.

YIKES! Open the front door and see the chaya – Mayan spinach tree – fallen over just in front of my gate. An awkward detour, a bunch of chopping and a bit of replanting to do, and lots of cuttings to give away if I can. Fast growing, edible privacy hedge stuff, it is.

LOVE that rainy season, farm damage and all

a photo article by Eric Jackson

Dogs don’t mind rainy season, especially when they have an understanding human around who won’t get too upset it they shake of the water on them.

And if the plumbing isn’t functioning as it really should be, rainy season lets you get away with that, too. It’s nature’s way.

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Portrait of Benito Juárez, National Palace, Mexico City.
Wikimedia photo by Jorge Méndez.

As Gaza assault intensifies, Egypt joins
ICJ case accusing Israel of genocide